A person may not only own or may not only work on one computing device. Besides a desktop computer, a person may for example own a notebook, a personal digital assistant (PDA) or an ultra mobile personal computer (UMPC). All of these devices may store the user's data such as presentations, pictures, documents, diagrams or other files. The user of these computing devices may encounter the problem of where to search for a particular file. The user may also wish to work on his customized and individually configured desktop environment independent of the computing device he or she is actually using. The term desktop environment pertains to the user's individually configured graphical user interface that is typically provided by an operating system, e.g. Linux, UNIX, Windows XP or Windows Vista.
There are solutions available that allow keeping files on various computing devices synchronized. The obvious one is of course a synchronization tool. Besides the well known file synchronizer ‘rsync’, there are solutions available to synchronize user data between various PDAs, smart phones and personal computers. However, synchronization encounters the problem of detecting when one file is changed on different locations. This may also lead to the well known problem of duplication or—even worse—to loss of data, e.g. calendar entries. There are concepts available addressing the above mentioned problem to manage files on different computing devices. These concepts use a so called core device that keeps the master copy of a particular file.
MetaPad is a project presented by IBM. A MetaPad is a hardware device that fits in a frame of the size of a handheld. A MetaPad is equipped with a processor, main memory, a hard disk and an interface to connect to peripheral I/O devices. A MetaPad furthermore is equipped with a standard PC operating system. A MetaPad can be attached to several shelves to provide the functionality of a PDA, a laptop or a desktop computer. A MetaPad is however limited to its own processor and cannot make use of the possibly better processor power of a laptop or a PC even when it is used in a docking station through which it can make use of the laptop's monitor and keyboard.
SoulPad is a portable storage device. The storage device contains a software stack and enables a user to suspend his computing environment on one PC and resume it at another PC that he or she may have never seen before. The PC boots an auto-configuring operating system from the SoulPad software stack, starts a virtual machine monitor provided by the software stack, and resumes a suspended virtual machine that has the user's entire personal computing environment which includes the user's file, the user's operating system, installed applications, desktop configuration as well as all running applications and open windows (all included in the software stack). SoulPad enables a user to hibernate a PC session to a pocket form-factor device, e.g. a USB-stick, and carry the device to another PC and resume his session on that PC. Furthermore, SoulPad uses an encrypted file system since it is possible that the user may lose his SoulPad. A SoulPad alone is however not a mobile solution as it is only a storage device and can therefore not be used without another computing device.
The ultra mobile PC (UMPC), previously known by its codename project Origami, is a specification for a small form-factor tablet PC. A UMPC is however limited to its own processor. Even if it is used in a docking station in combination with peripheral devices of a desktop computer, it has the same processing power as it has on the go.
It is an objective of the invention to provide a method which allows a computing device to make use of the processing power of another computing device. Furthermore, it is an object of the invention to provide a corresponding computing device that is also able to make use of the processing power of another computing device.